


An Empty Chair

by GeckoGirl89



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied Angel/Cordelia Chase - Freeform, POV Fred, Post-Episode: s05e12 You're Welcome, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-28 04:19:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10823610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GeckoGirl89/pseuds/GeckoGirl89
Summary: Fred checked her watch for the fifth time. She had expected that Angel and Cordelia might want a moment to themselves, but it was thirty minutes after everyone else had arrived and they hadn't shown up at the bar yet.





	An Empty Chair

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt in March on comment-fic (http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/720148.html?thread=95096340#t95096340): _any Whedonverse. any. ZINNIA Mixed - Thinking (or in Memory) of an Absent Friend_

Fred checked her watch for the fifth time. She had expected that Angel and Cordelia might want a moment to themselves, but it was thirty minutes after everyone else had arrived and they hadn't shown up at the bar yet. Fred gazed up at the rest of the group with a worried expression.  
  
"I'm sure it's fine, Fred," Charles said. "They'll be here soon."  
  
Fred grimaced and returned to sipping the margarita she had ordered.  
  
As Gunn had predicted, Angel showed up a few minutes later. But he was alone, and his eyes looked red. Had Angel been crying?  
  
Lorne's eyes widened as he looked at Angel. Whatever he could see in his aura was obviously not good.  
  
Wesley cleared his throat awkwardly and asked the question nobody else had the courage to ask. "Angel, what happened? Where's Cordelia?"  
  
Angel sat down in one of the two empty chairs at the table. He looked up, ostensibly at the group, but his eyes seemed to see through everyone at the table. Fred was alarmed to realize that this was unlike any version of her friend that she had ever seen. It was as if something was missing, but he clearly hadn't lost his soul. (He was far too miserable to have just experienced perfect happiness.) Angel seemed dimmer, as if someone had turned off all of the light in his eyes.  
  
Perhaps Angel's strange behavior was why his next words didn't surprise her  
  
"Cordy couldn't make it." Angel steepled his hands and stared at them as he continued. "I think she was an astral projection, because she told me she had to leave and that I needed to get the phone. The hospital called and said she..." Angel paused and swallowed heavily. "She died. Apparently, she never woke up."  
  
Angel covered his face with his right hand, and Fred's vision grew blurry with tears as she realized that Cordy was really gone. She bit her lip and whimpered when she saw the chair next to Angel, the chair Cordy should have been sitting in right now.  
  
"God," Wesley said in a hoarse voice.  
  
Fred looked around at everyone to see that they were either crying or attempting not to. Their faces showed grief and shock. Charles was wiping tears from his eyes, which reflected a mixture of anger and sadness. Wesley had removed his glasses and was breathing rapidly. Lorne was staring down into his Seabreeze with the most hopeless look Fred had ever seen from him. Harmony was openly sobbing, and Angel was struggling to not completely fall apart. Spike hadn't known Cordy the way the others had, but even he looked shocked and dismayed.  
  
"Bloody hell," Spike muttered. That summed it up pretty well, Fred thought.  
  
Spike stood up from the chair and stared at Angel for a few seconds. "This calls for whiskey," he declared. Angel looked towards him, but Spike had headed for the bar before Angel could respond.  
  
"I just don't understand," Harmony wailed. "She was here, and I hugged her yesterday!"  
  
Angel clenched his jaw. "It was a very convincing illusion." Fred sensed that there was something more to Angel's statement, but he obviously wasn't ready to discuss it.  
  
"She can't be dead!" Harmony denied. "She just can't!"  
  
Harmony started sobbing again, and Fred remembered Cordy's reunion with her, Charles, and Harmony in the office. She understood Harmony's impulse to deny what had happened. The memory of Cordy miraculously waking up had turned from joyful to bittersweet in light of this news. It was horrible, and Fred wished that it could be changed, but Cordy was truly gone.  
  
Spike returned to the table with Angel's drink. "Got you a whiskey double." He slid the drink over towards Angel. "Figured you could use it."  
  
Angel glanced up at Spike in gratitude. "Thanks."  
  
Spike was returning to his chair and responded to Angel's words automatically. "You're welcome."  
  
Spike's words broke through the thin defense in Angel's armor, and his shoulders shook as he wept. Lorne put his hand on Angel's shoulder and made soothing noises, but Angel barely seemed to notice.  
  
"That was... that was the last thing she ever said," Angel explained before he began crying once more.

Cordy shouldn't have had last words, not today, not just after she came back to them, showing everyone what they had been missing in her absence. Fred picked up a napkin at the table and dabbed at her eyes as she sniffled along with everyone else. Everything about this was so wrong. Cordy had died, and somehow everyone would have to carry on without her. But how could the team live without its heart?  
  
It was a question Fred was afraid they would never know how to answer.


End file.
